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232 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 of the whole conference, the significance and art of lobbying (this might well have been the subtitle), with papers on the science lobby in Canada ijohn Crowe, Ottawa), the social science lobby in the United States . (Roberta Miller, National Science Foundation, Washington), and by the executive directors of the Social Science Federation of Canada (Christian Pouyez) and of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities (Viviane Launay). There are also commentaries on these papers by James Edwards, an Alberta MP, Donald Savage, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and Marion Vaisey-Gesner (Manitoba). Finally, as an appendix, there are the presentations at the day-long workshop on strategic grants made by the representatives ofthe Medical Research Council, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the SSHRC. While there is genuine disagreement among the twenty-two contributors as to what should be done and how it should be done, there is no doubt that the case for additional support for research in the humanities and social sciences in Canada has been persuasively made. But the conference reached no formal conclusions and made no specific recommendations . More support, yes, but not how much more. This was a wise step. Research/scholarship is only one of the two primary functions of universities in Canada, as elsewhere, the other being instruction in all its many forms - undergraduate and graduate, liberal and professional, adult and continuing - and without studies, comparable to this one on the human sciences, on the 'inhuman sciences' and on the role in society of instruction and therefore of the needs in this area, it is impossible to decide how much time, effort, and money should be devoted to research/scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. In the long run the greatest value of the conference and the published . proceedings may well be that they lead to the organization of other conferences which focus on the role in society - and therefore the needs of the other disciplinary groups and of the basic elements of instruction. The likelihood of this occurring is enhanced by the existence of this volume, which provides a model as to how such conferences can be organized. It is an important book. (ROBIN S. HARRIS) Beth Sayan. Science under Siege: The Myth of Objectivity in Scientific Research CBC Enterprises. 192. $14.95 paper The recent flurry in both physics and popular circles over 'cold fusion' illustrates amply the central contention of Beth Savan's book, namelyI .that science does not exist in asocial vacuum and that consequently as an enterprise it suffers from all the human failings of other human activities. HUMANITIES 233 Scientists, Savan convincingly argues, are as likely to cheat, lie, steal, and boast as anyone else. Perhaps, she hints, they are even more likely to doso in our times, since the stakes are so high. The reader who expects an attack in this book on the objectivity of scientific results will not find it. Savan has no opinions (at least none expressed) on the objectivity or truth of scientific results as such. Her target is the orthodoxy of science and its establishment face. Thus the reader will not find the on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other-hand discussions of a philosophy of science book. Instead she will find a solid yet racy treatment of a host of problems which have increasingly come to the public and'the professional eye with respect to natural science and the technology which it spawns. If the book has a fault, it is that the distinction between science as such and the technology which it spawns are not clearly made. Thus disagreements over the impact of a particular technology on the environment by 'experts' are considered a kind of scientific dispute on a par with those in physics or chemistry or biology itself. Most, though certainly not all, of the examples in the book are drawn from the former. And as a consequence' misuse and corruption in the applications of scientific knowledge are made to appear as if they were misuse and corruption in the acquisition of scientific knowledge itself. Certainly Savan is right if what she i~ doing is...

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